Exclusive: Full Fledged Video Editor for your Android 2.2+ Device

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February 8, 2011May 17, 2011139

Just a couple of days ago, I was trying to figure out why exactly there weren’t any real Video Editors for Android Devices. It isn’t like the hardware wasn’t capable. 1GHz+ Processors with dedicated graphics chips seemed ideal for video editing. S^3 Devices like the N8 and iOS Devices like the iPhone 4 have them, so why not Android?
Yesterday I was tinkering around my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S) when the inbuilt ‘Samsung Apps’ said that there were 41 New Updates. The last time I had opened Samsung Apps, it was somewhat of a farce, with 4-5 applications. Pleasantly surprised, I was treated to a lot of new apps that seemed useful. Before I could check out any of them, I spotted one who’s name I actually read twice to make sure: Video Editor!
According to Samsung Apps, it had released on 26th January 2011. How I hadn’t heard or read about it till now still surprises me.

The app opens in landscape fullscreen, with even the notification bar invisible. You are greeted with a black screen and a ‘New Project’ Button

On opening, you are greeted with a timeline and an array of options.
1) Choose a Theme
There are 7 Theme options: Basic, Conference, Home Video, Movie, Party, Stage and Travel.
2) Insert Video
On clicking this, thumbnails of your recent videos pop up, very Stock Android Gallery-ish, and very smoothly. You can drag and drop as many videos as you want in your timeline at the bottom.

3) Insert Pictures
The same matrix of recent pictures pops up, which you can drag and drop anywhere on the timeline. You can move the timeline to the left and right smoothly with your fingers, and can even zoom in and out of it by pinching.

4) Insert Soundtrack
Your albums pop up, and you can chose a song or sound to insert into the timeline. The way the albums are arranged reminded me a lot of the leaked Honeycomb Music Player.

5) Click Picture/Video
You can fire up the Camera and shoot a video or picture right there to insert into your video.

6) Transitions.
Now that your content is decided, you can control the transitions between each video and picture. There are various options like Bars, Checkerboard and Circle. On selecting an option, it is previewed on the screen for you. You can also adjust the duration of each transition.

7) Trim Video
You can crop out portions of your video and select only what you want shown with two bars on either side, kind of like the Edit Word option of the Gingerbread Keyboard.

8) Effects
There are a couple of effects you can add to your pictures or videos to spruce them up a bit. The media gets immediately retouched and there is no waiting.
9) Export Video
You can export your completed video in a variety of resolutions, namely:
QCIF, QVGA, VGA, D1 and HD.
Exporting the video doesn’t take extraordinarily long.

So that’s about it! I was thoroughly impressed by this application, since it is one of the few that makes full use of the phone’s dedicated GPU and powerful processor. There’s some really good stuff going on under the hood. Kudos to Samsung Programmers for pulling this off.
Coming back to availability, I am not too sure if its available in all countries in the Samsung Apps program, so you’ll just have to check. Different countries have different applications available.
For those of you who aren’t so lucky, I managed to extract the .apk installation package of the App. You can download the Video Editor here or here. There’s no guarantee that it will work on your device, but its always worth the try!

So what are your thoughts on Android’s first proper video editor? Did it run on your device? Let us know in the comments below!

UPDATE:
So far the app seems to be running on all variants of the Galaxy S and its American cousin, the Samsung Vibrant. Doesn’t seem to be working on the G2, Desire HD and the Optimus One.
However, there’s an active thread you can follow over at XDA where they are trying to get it to work on other devices.
You can also try a basic video trimming app called VidTrim that should work on your phone.
Another application you can try is the LG Optimus Video Editor .

UPDATE 2

This application doesn’t seem to be working on Galaxy S or Galaxy Tab devices with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, so if you really need the app you might want to consider holding off the upgrade.

Also, the Video Maker app on the Galaxy S II is pretty much the same as this application.